Step On A Crack…Or Break Your Mother's Backhttps://steponacrack.net
Alcoholics Dementia, Devastation and Forgiveness
Mon, 21 Jan 2019 21:41:56 +0000 en
hourly
1 http://wordpress.com/https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/3d6f995fb3042567e59ad35738e3e586?s=96&d=https%3A%2F%2Fs0.wp.com%2Fi%2Fbuttonw-com.pngStep On A Crack…Or Break Your Mother's Backhttps://steponacrack.net
It Was Me I Could Not Savehttps://steponacrack.net/2015/05/20/it-was-me-i-could-not-save-2/
https://steponacrack.net/2015/05/20/it-was-me-i-could-not-save-2/#respondThu, 21 May 2015 00:11:04 +0000http://step-on-a-crack.com/2015/05/20/it-was-me-i-could-not-save-2/Step On A Crack...Or Break Your Mother's Back: Memory. Here is the weird thing: For decades I could remember the night my father was beaten. I could see through the eyes of my sister watching as the young men beat my father with a tire iron. I could see my…]]>

]]>https://steponacrack.net/2015/05/20/it-was-me-i-could-not-save-2/feed/0steponacrackGentrification, The Contract With the Community and 50-50-20-15https://steponacrack.net/2014/06/04/gentrification-the-contract-with-the-community-and-50-50-20-15/
https://steponacrack.net/2014/06/04/gentrification-the-contract-with-the-community-and-50-50-20-15/#commentsWed, 04 Jun 2014 17:33:29 +0000http://step-on-a-crack.com/2014/06/04/gentrification-the-contract-with-the-community-and-50-50-20-15/I grew up in el barrio. It was during a rough time and we made do. We created change. As an adult I came back to the Hood. Gentrification set in 7 years later and now my community is a shadow of its former self. Umar Lee addresses the issue of gentrification with calm and reason.

Unless you grew up in a community like mine it is hard to understand the issues folks living in poverty and with racism as a daily occurrence face. I miss my old neighborhood. I miss el barrio. Maybe my little piece of heaven can be saved with Umar Lee’s inspiration.

Props to you Umar Lee. Thank you.

Peace,

Jen

]]>https://steponacrack.net/2014/06/04/gentrification-the-contract-with-the-community-and-50-50-20-15/feed/1steponacrack“My people have a hard time giving up”https://steponacrack.net/2014/05/26/my-people-have-a-hard-time-giving-up/
https://steponacrack.net/2014/05/26/my-people-have-a-hard-time-giving-up/#commentsTue, 27 May 2014 00:47:21 +0000http://steponacrack.wordpress.com/?p=3387I often hear other writers critiquing those of us who write about alcoholism or addiction. I hear words like, ‘distanced’ or ”reserved’ as though the writer could not capture in words their own experience.

I get angry.

Living with an alcoholic or an addict, being an alcoholic or an addict, is not easy to write about in any kind of honest way. It has been years now and I have yet to write about the physicality of my mother’s death. I can barely face it in my waking hours.

Organs dissolve. Those dissolved organs leave the body while the person dying is still alive.

I will leave it there for now.

‘Distanced’?

‘Reserved’?

Hell yes.

How else do you live with the truth of a loved one killing themselves, slowly, over your entire lifetime?

]]>https://steponacrack.net/2014/05/26/my-people-have-a-hard-time-giving-up/feed/4steponacrack“How Poetry Can Help People with Dementia”https://steponacrack.net/2014/04/03/how-poetry-can-help-people-with-dementia/
https://steponacrack.net/2014/04/03/how-poetry-can-help-people-with-dementia/#commentsFri, 04 Apr 2014 05:48:01 +0000http://step-on-a-crack.com/?p=3382

My mother’s road through Wernicke-Korsakoff, alcoholics dementia, was a long and tangled one.

I cared for her for years.

As the dementia took over it became harder and harder for me to hold it all together.

I am grateful to the social workers who helped me come to terms with the fact that I alone could not care for my mother. She was a difficult woman at best. She beat me as a child. Her alcoholism wrecked havoc on my family’s life, and she was fading away.

I was blessed to find very loving, tolerant and patient women to help me care for my mother.

My mother tried every trick in the book on Catherine. She locked her out and left out the back door to head to a liquor store. She would fill her grocery cart to the brim only to have ‘forgotten’ her checkbook at home, leaving Catherine to explain to the cashier my mothers situation. My mother would stand there laughing at Catherine the entire time. My mother would hide from Catherine in shops. She would stop Catherine from eating her lunch, accuse her of stealing, call her names. Catherine called me daily with updates. She would tell me about my mother’s hijinks with a sense of humor. She never took the mean things my mother said to her to heart. She never called my mother names. She was always early and took time to assess what needed to be done around the house too. I would use her list to make short work of caring for my mother on my shifts. Catherine gave Mommy her dignity. Catherine was our Angel on Earth.

The time away from Mommy was very good for me and in turn, for my family. It took me weeks to wean myself off of seeing Mommy daily, of calling. I had to Let Go. I had to Let Go and Let Catherine.

I found this article about caregivers using poetry to help reach people suffering with dementia of all kinds.

As I wend my way back to the Hard Truth, today I am grateful for the woman who began to help me Let Go.

Catherine.

A caretaker. An unsung hero.

On Mommy’s death-bed I read to her. I read to her from her favorite poetry book.

For 20 minutes, silence blankets the room, punctuated only by the soft breathing of two women who are seated, facing one another.

The eldest of the two struggles to speak—she has dementia and talking has recently become difficult for her.
A single word, “life,” finally ekes its way out of her mouth.

The other woman, a poet named Susanna Howard, makes a notation in her notebook. Once she’s finished, she takes her eyes off the page and resumes waiting.

Sometime later, thanks to Howard’s ministrations, the elderly woman’s remarks have, almost magically, become woven into a new pattern, at once familiar and unique:

Lived a Life
Nobody here asks what you did
In your life
It seems they seem to think
We were put on earth with broken legs
And have come here for sympathy

Nobody wants to listen
I’ve had a stroke
Words don’t come out
And they say ‘Yes, yes’—
Don’t really want to know

It sounds silly
But it’s quite true
We have all lived a life

Giving a voice to those silenced by dementia

Howard, whose motto is “All words are okay,” is the creative force behind “Living Words,” an innovative form of art therapy aimed at giving people with dementia a new voice.

Too often, says Howard, people with cognitive impairment are written off by society.

Even close friends and family can become unsure of how to communicate with loved ones who have lost their ability to form coherent thoughts and sentences. Most hesitate to speak to dementia-stricken people for fear that they will upset them by asking a question that can’t be answered, or say something that unintentionally offends them.

Of course, not speaking only serves to further alienate the individual living with cognitive impairment. “I find it very sad when people say the essence of a person goes when they have dementia,” says Howard. “The person you loved is still there, operating from their essential self.”

Continue reading to read additional poems written by people living with dementia…

Related
Coconut Oil for Alzheimer’s: Miracle Cure or Misguided Myth?
7 Tips for Talking to Aging Parents
How Service Dogs Can Help People With Alzheimer’s Disease

Finding the Poetry in Dementia originally appeared on AgingCare.com.

We all just want to be heard

Different dementias can affect different people in different ways.

For example, the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease are often marked by progressive memory loss, while individuals suffering from Lewy-body dementia often experience vivid hallucinations and delusions.

It’s no wonder that most outsiders become easily baffled and thus hesitant to engage a cognitively impaired friend or family member.

But avoiding interactions only isolates that individual further, making him feel unheard and almost in-human.
That’s what makes the poetry sessions are so helpful.

According to Howard, going through the process of writing a poem, and then hearing the finished verse spoken back to them, can help people with dementia feel connected. “When a person hears their words, they resonate with them; even if they don’t recall saying them. This resonation prompts a feeling of being heard on some level,” she says.

Number 65
The chair—it’s so dirty feeling
I’m not in running order
Where do you go to when you
Go out?
I keep out of walking mode
With the mainframe
In the convoy—don’t go around much
I wish
Wish I could drive in a big car
Drive away in a car, oh
Oh I, I wish, wish I could
Fly just fly right away
To number 65—Not
Drifting along at nothing

Changing the way we communicate

In honor of National Poetry Month, we wanted to take the time to highlight the incredible power of poetry to connect human beings through each life stage.

For her part, Howard hopes that her work will help alleviate some of the apprehension that accompanies communication between those trapped in the alternate reality of dementia and those operating in the outside world.

It’s difficult for Howard to pinpoint the most poignant lesson she’s learned while working with men and women living with dementia, “It can’t really be summed up—I am constantly surprised at how powerful the work can be,” she says.

She does admit that one of the most refreshing aspects of working with these men and women is the fact that many of the filters imposed by society and propriety are stripped away, leaving refreshingly raw and honest observations. “People with dementia use language that more directly links to their emotions. They tend to say how they’re really feeling.”

In addition to her work with the dementia-stricken, Howard also holds seminars and workshops to help people working in elder care facilities comprehend how people with dementia express their thoughts and feelings.

Her hope is that Living Words therapy paradigm (which has been rapidly spreading throughout the UK) will grow into a model that’s used around the world. Howard is currently working on publishing a book of poems written by people with dementia.

Lost
I don’t know really, because
I’m really
Lost.

It scares me to hell
I don’t know what to do—
I’m scared

It was so disgusting—I just sat there, doing
Nothing
I thought I was
In an asylum I was
Ashamed that I
Sit there

These people were people who, well they are
Old age pensioners. They made me an
Old
Age
Pensioner. I was
Really annoyed—terrible isn’t it
There’s nothing wrong with me—
I just don’t do
Anything.

I feel
Lost—that’s all I can say, because
I’ve never felt
Lost—this is
Just hell
So you now have the whole thing.
I can’t say it myself.
The saddest thing.

]]>https://steponacrack.net/2014/04/01/welcome-national-poetry-month-2014/feed/0steponacrackphoto-54photo-55photo-56photo-58This Wild Ass One Thinghttps://steponacrack.net/2014/03/04/this-wild-ass-one-thing/
https://steponacrack.net/2014/03/04/this-wild-ass-one-thing/#commentsWed, 05 Mar 2014 06:34:12 +0000http://steponacrack.wordpress.com/?p=3360I choose not to believe in coincidence.
I see All of It as part of some
Wild
Ass

One.
Thing.

I don’t know what that
Wild
Ass
One
Thing is.

I do know it is there.

Today in line at the grocery store the man behind me was joyous.
I can not think of any other way to describe this man.

I noticed a large crucifix around his neck
A tattered sweater underneath.

His smile was luminous.

I asked,

“Are you ready for tomorrow?”

He beamed.

“Oh. Yes. I am. And you?”

“Yes,” I said. “Tomorrow begins it all.”

“It is remarkable is it not?” He said.

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday,
The first day of the Lenten Season.

“What is your name?” I asked

“Umberto Pablo Acciento, but you can call me Bert.”

We talked as we waited in line. We talked of Faith and the power of Redemption and of Love.

I told him about my Son who told me on the way to school today that he is looking forward to Lent. My sometimes Atheist, most times Agnostic, and occasionally Catholic, son is beginning to see the power held in our Lenten season.

As I was checking out, Bert handed me a package.

“I want you to have this. I have a larger one for your son, the seeker.”

I could not open it there, the line was long. Bert wrote his name on the envelope and listed his parish. As we said goodbye we hugged one another.

It seemed we were in the Mass;

“Peace be with you, and also with you…”

It seemed that we were in the presence of this other
Wild
Ass
Thing

That is one.

We were.

I opened the package in the car.

It is a simple and touching crucifix, at the center:
The Saint Benedict Medal.

With it a brochure with the history of the medal and of Saint Benedict

At the top of the medal in Latin it says

Pax.

Peace.

I choose not to believe in coincidence.
I choose to see
Connection
Love

One. Wild. Ass. Thing.

Bert put his name on the envelope
And the parish he is with

Today in the grocery store
In the middle of the day
I was given a gift by a priest
Also standing in line

Luminous.

Pax.

We need this now.
This Lenten Season I will focus on
Peace
Peace in our World
Peace in my life
Moment to moment
And peace for all of us entangled in this
Wild
Ass
One
Thing.

I am grateful for all of it.
Sometimes I forget.

The Lenten Season is full of Connection.
The Lenten Season is full of Love.

The Lenten Season is Full.

Peace to all of you

Jen

May this season bring you clarity, hope, definition
Whatever it is you need to move closer to this One Thing we share…

LITTLETON, Colo. (AP) — A suburban Denver high school student who was shot in the head by a classmate died Saturday afternoon, hospital officials and her family said.

“It is with heavy hearts that we share that at 4:29 p.m. this afternoon, Claire Davis passed away, with her family at her side,” a statement from Littleton Adventist Hospital said.

Please do not forget this:

“Karl Pierson, 18, shot Davis, who just happened to be sitting nearby with a friend as Pierson, armed with a shotgun, ammunition strapped to his body, Molotov cocktails and a machete, entered the school and headed toward the library. Davis appeared to be a random target, Arapahoe County Sheriff Grayson Robinson has said.”

Karl Pierson shot and killed himself.

80 seconds was all it took for two young people to die.

My son could see the police helicopters hover above the high school which is not far from his.

I received this text from my son:

“Hey mom there was a shooting nearby everyone is fine here. We are on lockdown.”

A message like this one should not be so Matter of Fact.

My son could see the police cars and SWAT teams make their way towards the school.